Demographic Catastrophe: What Happened to the Native Population after 1492?
The following information is an excerpt from an article through the digital history project from
Virginia Tech. The beginning of the article, which I omitted, reviewed the introduction of
Spanish explorers into the Americas. Now you will read about the contact between the Native
Americans and the Europeans. Note: some statistics may vary from information I gave you as a
result of the variety of sources historians encounter.
Native peoples in these lands met the Spaniards with a range of responses. Columbus described
the Taino Indians of Hispanola as generous with what they had, timid, and submissive. Often,
however, encounters were marked by misunderstanding and resulted in armed conflict. In 1519,
the Spaniards who accompanied the "conquistador" Hernando Cortés into Central Mexico
confronted the sophisticated and highly militaristic society of the Aztecs. There, the cautious
welcome extended by the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II and the people of the capital city of
Tenochtitlán quickly turned to hostilities.
After a few months, the Aztecs forced the Spaniards to flee the city under cover of darkness, but
the rejoicing did not last. The Spaniards, aided by Txalcalans, archenemies of the Aztecs,
returned with force in April 1521. After a four-month siege of the city, the Spaniards reentered
Tenochtitlán in August 1521 and established the Kingdom of New Spain. Cortés sent his
lieutenant, Pedro de Alvarado south to claim the territory of what is now Guatemala, and the
exploration and conquest of Meso-America continued throughout the sixteenth century.
Demographic Catastrophe
Many thousands of Aztecs died in the siege of Tenochtitlán. The Spaniards who entered the city
describes the piles of bodies ravaged by famine and disease as well as the wounds of war. How
could the 600 Spaniards who accompanied Cortés have wiped out such a large portion of the
population of Tenochtitlán, where an estimated 200,000 inhabitants resided? Years earlier, the
Spanish authorities of the islands of Hispanola and Cuba also told of the massive death toll that
followed the arrival of the Spaniards. Indeed, the death of the local peoples is a common theme
in the annals of Spanish conquest of the New World. It happened over and over again; native
Americans died in droves as the Spaniards moved from one locale to the next, exploring,
claiming territory, Christianizing native peoples, and establishing labor systems to exploit the
natural resources of the New World.
Historians have debated the number of deaths and the percent of the population that died
following the arrival of the Spaniards. Early colonial documents, including census figures and
eyewitness descriptions suggested to many historians that Meso-America was a densely
populated region in the fifteenth century, before the arrival of the Spaniards. Other historians
have found this claim without merit; they believe the area was largely wilderness, only scantily
populated. Estimates of the population of Mexico before the Spanish conquest have ranged from
3 million to 58 million, but the best estimate at present is a figure between 16 and 18 million. An
additional 5 to 6 million people inhabited the rest of Central America. The population figure for
the entire hemisphere is thought to fall between 48 and 53 million.
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Although there has been much dispute over the exact numbers of people living in the New
World, no one disputes the sharp downward trajectory in population density after the arrival of
the Spaniards. Estimates of population decline following contact with the Europeans range from
70 to 90 percent and what happened has been called a "demographic catastrophe." According to
the historian David Stannard, the decimation of new world peoples was a "holocaust." "Far from
the heroic and romantic heraldry that customarily is used to symbolize the European settlement
of the Americas, the emblem most congruent with reality would be a pyramid of skulls." *
Health, Disease, and the Columbian Exchange
What explains such a massive drop in the numbers of native inhabitants? Warfare accounted for
some of the deaths. During the siege of Tenochtitlán, for example, enemies of the Aztecs aided
the greatly outnumbered Spaniards. Indians battled Indians, and the massive death toll can be
explained in part by the longstanding hostilities between neighboring tribes. Other factors were
also at work in Tenochtitlán. The geography of the city - built as it was on a lake connected to
land (and a food supply) by causeways that were easily blockaded or destroyed by the Spaniards
and their allies - contributed to the death toll. The inhabitants depended on aqueducts for fresh
water and here again, the Spaniards were able to disrupt the supply. The Spaniards fought with
more complex and lethal weapons, including cannon, although the obsidian spears of the Indians
could be quite deadly. Once the Spaniards were in control of an area, their determination to
extract as much wealth from the land as quickly as possible led them to exploit local workers
without regard for health or life.
Warfare and labor abuse, however, cannot fully explain the massive population decline that beset
the Americas after the arrival of the Spaniards. Here again, the siege of Tenochtitlán is
illustrative, for it points to the role that germs have played in history. When the Spaniards
attacked in April 1521, the Aztecs were a foe weakened by disease. The preceding fall an
epidemic of smallpox raged through the city, killing among others, the new king, who had
replaced Moctezuma II. Known as a skillful hardliner who wanted no alliance with the
Spaniards, this new ruler was replaced by a youth, without the same leadership potential. As the
Spaniards mobilized forces against Tenochtitlán, the city had a weak leader and its inhabitants
were still reeling from a disease that killed as many as 30 percent of the people infected. While
battles with the Spaniards resulted in many thousands of deaths, countless others, throughout the
Americas, died from disease. The Spaniards unwittingly brought germ warfare to their
exploration and conquest of the New World.
Disease Environments
In 1492, Europeans and New World inhabitants lived in separate disease environments; "disease
environment" refers to the particular pattern of diseases that are present in a particular area, and
while Europeans and Native Americans shared some disease similarities, there were also
significant differences between the two. The European disease environment was a complex one,
in part because Europeans had been sharing diseases with other areas of the globe - Asia, Africa,
and the Middle East. When Europeans made trading expeditions to these regions they took with
them European diseases and returned with diseases picked up in the areas they visited. Travel
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and trade blurred the lines separating the four major disease environments of the eastern
hemisphere.
The cities Europeans lived in exposed them to "crowd" diseases, those spread by close contact
and poor sanitation and personal hygiene (Europeans rarely bathed). Typhus, spread by fleas,
was endemic; a form of typhus spread by lice was more severe and epidemics of lice-borne
typhus regularly swept through urban areas. The average European diet was not a balanced one,
exposing Europeans to malnourishment and nutritional diseases. Smallpox and measles ravaged
the population in waves or "epidemics," striking young people especially and leaving those who
survived with immunity from future infections. When the next epidemic of smallpox struck,
some part of the population remained healthy, while others, usually the young, were suffering
from the diseases. Infant mortality was high in Europe; about half the population died before the
age of fifteen. Influenza and other respiratory infections were regular health threats. Europeans
were familiar with venereal diseases, however, doctors had not described the symptoms of
syphilis in their medical texts and it is unlikely that syphilis belonged to the European disease
environment. Fevers, intestinal disorders, typhus, smallpox, measles, and influenza were
"endemic" to Europe; that is, much of the population had experience with these diseases.
During the fourteenth century, bubonic plague swept through Europe, killing between 20 and 30
million people by 1400 (about one-fourth of the population). Known as the "black death"
because of the spots of blood that turned black under the skin, bubonic plague was a "pandemic"
in the fourteenth century. In a pandemic, most of a region's population is affected, or the disease
is epidemic in different parts of the world at the same time. Both were true of bubonic plague in
the fourteenth century. The plague began in central Asia and was transported to Europe by land
across the Middle East and then by ship to the various ports in Europe. The bacteria that causes
plague breeds in rats. Rats carry fleas, and the bite of a flea from an infected rat transmits the
disease to humans. The infected rats traveled to Europe along with the trade goods and spread
the plague across the continent. By the end of the fifteenth century, the plague had receded and
the customary European disease environment had reemerged.
Until the end of the fifteenth century, the disease environment of the Americas remained isolated
from that of other parts of the world. And, in isolation, the peoples who inhabited the western
hemisphere developed unique patterns of disease. Among the diseases missing from the
environment of the western hemisphere were measles, smallpox, mumps, and typhus. These
diseases migrated to the Americas along with the Europeans, and when they struck, they did so
as "virgin soil epidemics." This term describes the initial outbreak of a disease previously
unknown in an area (or absent from a particular area for many generations). A virgin soil
epidemic always results in high rates of morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death).
The transfer of germs across the Atlantic is part of what the historian Alfred Crosby has called
the "Columbian Exchange," or the transfer of plants, animals, and diseases across the Atlantic, in
both directions. Crosby argues that just as we consider the people who migrated to the new world
to be active agents of historical change, we must also consider the role played by the migration
of plants, animals, and germs. The "most important changes brought on by the Columbian
voyages," Crosby claims, "were biological in nature."**
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Europeans brought with them grains such as wheat and rye. They took back to Europe potatoes,
corn, and tomatoes. Horses, cattle, and sheep had been domesticated by Europeans centuries
earlier, and these animals quickly made themselves at home in the American landscape. In
contrast, inhabitants of the Americas had relatively few domesticated animals - dogs and some
fowl, but no burden-bearers like the horse. There were serious social and ecological
consequences as a result of the transporting of animals and plants. As sheep proliferated in the
new world, they ravaged the Mexican landscape. The potato became a staple of the European
peasant diet; when a fungus struck Irish potato crops in the 1840s, millions died and countless
others immigrated to cities in the United States. Those of us who try to rid our lawns of
dandelions each spring are coping with one of the consequences of the Columbian exchange, a
European plant brought to America with the first explorers.
Although the new plants and animals may have disrupted the lifestyles of new world inhabitants,
these peoples did not die in epic numbers because of the transfer of plants and animals. In
contrast, the germs brought by the Europeans were often lethal.
* Quoted in Suzanne Austin Alchon, A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in a Global
Perspective ( Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 147.
** Alfred W.Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
(Westport: Greenwood Publishing Co., 1972), xiv.
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